13 June 2020
HealthDay Reports: That Cough or Sneeze Behind You Might Not Be COVID — Study
You can't judge how sick someone is by how bad their cough or sneeze sounds.
That Cough or Sneeze Behind You Might Not Be COVID: Study
FRIDAY, June 12, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The grosser someone sounds when they cough or sneeze, the more likely you are to suspect they have a contagious infection -- even if it's not true.
That's the upshot of a new study in which participants were asked to judge whether people were -- or weren't -- infected with a communicable disease by the sound of their coughs and sneezes.
On average, they guessed about four out of 10 sounds correctly, according to researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The findings were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.